Station Crew Preps for STS-135 and Conducts Science Experiments

The Expedition 28 crew members living and working aboard the International Space Station focused on preparations for the arrival of space shuttle Atlantis and conducted a variety of scientific experiments Thursday.

Flight Engineers Satoshi Furukawa and Mike Fossum gathered and pre-packed items for return to Earth aboard Atlantis. The space shuttle and its four-member STS-135 crew are set to launch Friday at 11:26 a.m. EDT and dock with the station Sunday, July 10. Atlantis will deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module packed with about 8,200 pounds of supplies and spare parts to sustain station operations beyond the shuttle’s retirement.

Fossum and Flight Engineer Ron Garan continued ongoing preparations for the spacewalk they will conduct during flight day five of the STS-135 mission. The primary tasks during the spacewalk include installing a long-duration exposure experiment and moving a failed ammonia pump to Atlantis’ payload bay for return to Earth.

Flight Engineer Sergei Volkov worked with the Izgib-Dakon experiment, which studies how vibrations aboard the station affect scientific hardware. He also worked with the Russian Bar experiment, which investigates pressurization and leak detection in the Russian modules.

Furukawa had some time set aside to work with the CsPINs experiment in the Kibo module. CsPINs is a Japanese plant experiment that studies cucumber seedlings’ growth patterns in microgravity.

Commander Andrey Borisenko and Flight Engineer Alexander Samokutyaev worked in the Russian segment of the station maintaining and monitoring its systems. Samokutyaev also transferred cargo from the docked Progress 43 resupply craft.

The sucess of flight atlantis ISS-135 to outer space with its cumminicative skill hardware programme,will give an exercise to growth of bio components in microgravity like cucummber seedling,the space shuttle will perform a 15 days workfare and will return sucessfully to kennedy space center florida USA